a new(ish) email script: So, I finally rewrote ~/bin/blog, which all my daniel@triplehelix.org
email gets forwarded to, and made it work properly. If the GnuPG
signature isn't there, or doesn't verify, it kicks it to the curb, and
only works if there's a proper signature (don't laugh - it used to end
up creating an empty file). It's also a hell of a lot nicer - I wrote a
small GnuPG interface (needed to specify --keyring), as Mail::GnuPG
didn't work. It also defangs the MIME nicely (no more errant =3D's), and
is generally far better. I'm going to clean it up and post it on my Pyblosxom
hacks section later on (which already has my propagation script).
It's also about half the size of the old one, in addition to sucking
far less, and being more flexible, and not requiring any external
scripts, and using less tempfiles. Yay!
(21:19 | #)

beware the ides of march, and openldap2: Be warned, woody users: do not upgrade to the version of OpenLDAP from
backports.org. I did so on tycho,
a machine I maintain, and about an hour later, the other people who use
the machine started complaining that they couldn't log in. Myself and
the other admins have /etc/passwd logins, but everyone else was LDAP.
No-one with LDAP could log in.

That's because our LDAP database was now magically empty.
Empty. No amount of dpkg-reconfigure'ing could even
convince it to add an admin user to the database. I removed the relevant
section from my sources.list, spat on the ground, and swore never to use
it again. Stick with the version in woody.
(09:44 | #)

openldap resolved - yay planet debian: With the able assistance of nobse, I resolved the OpenLDAP issue.
OpenLDAP 2.1 is quite strict in what it accepts now, and you can't have
an object being both an inetOrgPerson and an account (but posixAccount
is OK). I had all the users as being both, so the upgrade errored out,
with a one-line error, which was just line noise in a dist-upgrade to a
few backports.org packages - the postinst should, IMO, error out if the
upgrade fails.

Thanks again to Norbert for chasing this one up - you rock, dude! :)
Planet Debian hasn't even been alive a couple of days and it's already
been immensely useful.
(13:00 | #)

new from ikea, the dumpkopf!: Is there any way to get Mailman to allow senders based on the Sender:
header? Katie is set up to propagate to a number of Mailman lists, but I
can't seem to find a way to always accept anything sent by it, since the
From: line varies (from daniel@, to archive-admin@, to whoever uploaded
the package) - I'd love to be able to just green-light anything from
archive-admin@.
(19:05 | #)

konq and lj - bad interactions: I use LiveJournal a fair bit, mainly as an aggregator for various friends'
journals. So, 90% of what I do with the LJ site is going to the
aforementioned URL and reading. The other 10% is adding friends.

Konq chooses to always show the top JavaScript menu, taking up the top
three rows. And display most of the text from half a line above the
first menu. This means I have to guess whether I did what I wanted to
right or not, and have to spend about a minute playing around with
moving my mouse around the menus until the button I want to click
becomes visible, and not hidden behind all the menus. Grr.

nanasawa is coming into work very soon for a dist-upgrade (no more
Gentoo), and a new KDE snapshot. Hopefully this one plays nicely with
LJ.
(20:05 | #)

toys! toys! toys!: I have a cool new toy - a Yamaha 5.1 set of speakers. The receiver will decode Dolby Digital, Dolby ProLogic I/II, and DTS. It has a USB input (which I can't use - it doesn't actually seem to be USB audio), 2x SPDIF in, and a 3.5mm in. It outputs to its speakers, plus a headphone jack, plus an extra 3.5mm line out, *plus* a SPDIF output! What more could you ask for? It also has a nifty remote control, looks rather purty, and hasreally good sound quality, and volume.

Missed work's Christmas lunch because I was at home all day, sick. Bah! :(
(01:32 | prodigy - one love | #)

jdub: Depends on your point of view, really. Personally, I'd say Ballmer's right; for Microsoft, it is about a viable business, not a viable industry. Personally, my motivations are: a) viable industry, b) good times [the people are fantastic, by and large], c) disposing of spare time while having fun, d) fame, e) fortune. Of course, it would be nice if everyone worked together and had a nice, viable, industry built on love.

So, a few days ago, I became
a Debian Developer, after three and a half years. Yay, and stuff.
Unfortunately, I got my secret decoder ring right as exams started, ugh.

liedra: Aren't green P's for primary producers, who can't take
passengers?sxpert: Please take it off Advogato.

Random rambling: Been using GNOME (not by choice), trying to like it, failing.
The "let's hide away anything useful in GConf" attitude, the buggy autohide on
the panel, gnome-terminal ... it's way too obnoxious to be able to use
regularly.